most days
Sunday
Benches and rot and decay and memorial bouquets with little etched metal plaques and the worn edges of a play field tattered by children’s platform Keds and the mindful paces of evening strolls and grass the color of a lime that was sliced a day past its prime and dandelions the color of lemonade from a can and why do we no longer see cemeteries as a place of picnic? Third places that used to be an unknown future place. A now and a then and a celebration and grief and is death not a third place in itself? A gathering of sorts for the living and the space that used to occupy it.
Monday
I will never slow my walk towards a man on an afternoon stroll who smiles without a glance in my direction. He looks like Montessori school and scrambled eggs, smells like bluebonnets and the Pacific Northwest and herbal tea and freshly washed hair. NPR and open mic nights but only when the babysitter is available. Buy local. Smiling because there is a tabby cat emerging from the beautifully curated shrubs of a neighbor’s yard. Isn’t she beautiful? he says to me. Never looking away from her. I want to stop and admire the wanderer. But maybe I’m the bear here in this woodland neighborhood of squirrels and robins and gentle creatures who stop to sit in silence in the morning dew. Leave prints but no trace. A smile that lingers after I’m gone, it’s not mine to take but I’ll pass it on.
Tuesday
Benches and stoops and the little worn down areas of grass surrounding a picnic table saying “hello I’ve been trodden and forgotten and I’ve been loved well not me myself but I’ve been of use to someone to so many someones who may not remember the pebble I left in their left sneaker as a reminder of the day they sat here and stared into the eyes of a boy they’d never been alone with outside of bus rides home and 10 AM trigonometry lessons and they may not remember the way their jeans brushed me for being a few inches too long and they tripped little over a pant leg and fell into the nervous arms of The Boy and they both took sharp breaths in and held them the way a mother holds her child the first time he topples off his tricycle and onto the little worn down patch of grass surrounding a picnic table in the park.”
Wednesday
The tumble of a crabapple that wasn’t quite ripe enough to fall from its tree mother but the shaking of the earth around us brought on by stampedes of size 2 Skechers ones with Velcro straps and light up soles made the branches waver just enough and down the apple fell down to the earth next to your foot where you almost tripped but didn’t quite and there’s something nostalgic about the drone of suburban chatter and mandolin strums and infants crying, goldendoodles barking and some preteens behind you are leaning their slender bodies against the crabapple tree talking about something or the other you’re a bit too old to understand and although it’s overwhelming to be in a place so filled with life and sound you stay in place and sip your lavender lemonade and smile kindly at the campaign volunteer as she hands you a glossy pamphlet aimed at bleeding heart liberals like you who spend their Wednesday afternoons alone at farmers’ markets pretending to just be a part of it all.
Who Knows When?
4 Items on a Rain Sodden Park Bench
Empty fifth of Jack Daniel’s
BIC lighter
An inhaler
Half-eaten tin of sardines
Another Wednesday
Adorned in a dress most probably last worn by somebody’s church bound auntie with my un ! socked ! feet raw against the warm innards of these Oxford Doc Marten’s that I paid way too much for to achieve the aesthetic of someone who thrifts and barely pays a thing. Never been in style and never will be? Except for in this nicely queer bohemian anti-capitalist post-Trump gentrified space and time I occupy, paying the rent for a six figure corporate cog with the budget of a non-profit burnout just to maintain the quality of life the likes of Jonathan Larson et all circa 1989 theatre district NYC I romanticize every night as I fall asleep surrounded by items that lived lives long before they lived with me. Today my coffee smells like rubber but the mulleted barista (who laughs knowingly every time I order the exact same latte in the exact same way as always) asked me about my writing and I tipped him the same $2 I always do and today when I walked in he was discussing the vice presidential candidacy and maybe he’s not as aloof and high out of his silly little mind as I like to pretend he is. Maybe he really did want to know how I felt about Shrek that one morning he asked me if I found the ogre attractive. An unhoused man sits next to me peacefully snoring and Mullet smiles and converses with him about the day when he’s awake and even though my brain feels wonky today maybe this place will continue being okay in the simplest of ways and I’ve never even bothered to ask this man’s name.
pro-whimsy agenda 